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Report; Grayson County Fall Festival, Sept, 2012

Now that I'm home & have taken a nap, I just wanted to say that it was another GREAT weekend!

The weather was mostly good, although a few showers thinned out the festival crowd about mid-afternoon.
We had very little rain compared to last year.

It seamed that everyone really enjoyed the place with it's events & scenery, as well as each others company.
I think we ended up with about 22 overnight hammockers, but I'll let someone with the list confirm that.

The food we shared in camp was soooo good. Thanks to everyone that helped.

I'll let Rockdawg & others tell more about the raffle, but it was a fun time for all, including a couple we met & adopted for the weekend. I kinda think they will become full time hammockers. More on that later.

We got home last night at 10 pm. Dakota (Gutter) and my mom (Gee) ending up very sickly on the way home....we think the roast beef, that I only had 1 bite of, but mom ate mine at the restaurant Gutter is home from school today too. There was a lot of having to exit the expressway.

Other than that we all had a totally wonderful time. Today I'm just physically tired and resting so more about the trip to follow later.

As a complete side note, and totally irrelevant to the camping, the 3 of us on the way home all voted for the hammock forums year book that L.D Cakes and SlowHike have the best hair ever!!!

Yea, leave it to me to go there, but we would love to have hair like that...and we met someone at the festival who was 69 years old, 80% Cherokee, and he had gorgeous hair too, not to mention he had a personality that was a hoot to be around, the 3 of us had a hard time breaking away from him and his character!!! (I spent way too much money at his booth, but later he chased me down in the parking lot and gave me several great samples and his number so that I could order more things and help his family set up a website....which I will happily do for free) Anyways, just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful

Well, I'll have to do my pictures tomorrow or Wednesday since mom accidentally went home with my camera

I was able to set up all 3 hammocks and two tarps right where mom wanted. Was a bit difficult since the trees were closer than ideally, but we got it all to work out great.

I had added draft tubes to the foot end of the DIY 3/4 UQs before we left, and all three worked great!!! What an improvement

Nothing held us back, not even the Saturday rain. We bid on two different ponys, but did not win. We got close enough on one that we had to go back and make sure we didn't win it. Very glad we didn't win, as we hadn't planned on bidding, let alone how to get one or two back to Ohio. Next year we will plan better on that one, if it is still a passion of Mom's by that time.

After the pony auction. We enjoyed the festival, tried to find my fellow hangers, but after much searching the tree line, realized you all probably got rained out. We found a naturalist at the festival that was such a wonderful character. I've also found his wife to be just as colorful. Good people

Gutter and I were able to get mom up the path to view the Magic Tree and the overlook. Awesome!!!! It took us way longer than I thought it would, especially getting her back down. It also put things into perspective for me. I know she is inspired by many more paintings to come. I will be making her a website and will let you all know when it is done so you can see her wonderful art work. She is very good, and it is Grayson Highlands that puts things in gear in her imagination, big time.

We had a GREAT dinner with my fellow hangers Saturday night. Just a full of flavor meal and a wonderful group of people. Everyone is so unique and each of you bring something different to the fire circle....I love it, Good people!

The auction was a total blast, and who would have thought I would have used my bear chimes as much as I did during Saturday night and Sunday morning. Sorry to those of you that were hearing me or that I may have woke up, there were critters and something big across the street from the bathroom....that I now think was an owl But, I smelled good thanks to all the goodies from the naturalist, and I was a bit concerned about becoming dinner to something bigger than myself....and at the time I couldn't place that noise to an owl. Not one I've ever heard before.

The next morning was a nice calm, relaxing pack up. No rain Mom actually took her own set up down and put it away, Gutter is still a bit hard to ring in on task, but he is doing so much better lately. A lot of growth on his part just over the past year.

We had a wonderful get together lunch at a country dinner. Great company , not so good roast beef ...but the rest of lunch was good . I was so glad we did that, as I felt I didn't have enough time with everyone and that additional time was very nice, and I needed it.

Thanks go to each and everyone of you. We had a wonderful time. It seems I do a lot of running when ever I'm at hangs, but there is just so much to see, and so much to do, that it's a bit hard to balance it all. My apologies to anyone who may have felt I wasn't around enough....it's not that I don't want to be, but it's trying to do it all that gets in the way.

The two hikers that were adopted were great too. I can't recall her name, but she and mom really hit it off with their commonality of art.

This was a much needed time for mom and I. We've had a rough year, not even holiday meals together this year. I hope some day she will see that my choices are mine and that I am not her. My life revolves around family, not work. That's hard for her to digest. It's difficult to explain, and goes too deep for here, but it was nice having her back in sync with me, or I guess I should say "accepting" and we had some nice chats up by our hammocks and some great laughter. The car ride home was rough, but I'm hoping most of that was just coming from her not feeling well.

Thank you all for allowing us to share that neck of the woods with you. WVA has always been a state that I would love to live in. I'm looking forward to next year already.

A big forum hug to everyone, and once I get my camera back, I will get those pictures on. I don't have any setup pictures or of the group (battery died, and I forgot the charger), but I have some wonderful shots of the land.